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CHAPTER ONE
“We’re out of eggnog.”
I blinked up at my grandfather. “It’s nine-thirty in the morning.”
“Is it?” He looked toward the clock that was sitting on top of the fireplace. “So it is. We’re still out of eggnog, Quinn.”
“I am not making you more eggnog at nine-thirty in the morning. I have a potential crisis on my hands and your lack of eggnog is not it.” I got up from the armchair and walked into the kitchen where my six-year-old niece, Jasmine, was making a royal mess decorating Christmas cookies. “Hey, Jazzy.”
She grinned up at me, showing where she’d just lost her other front tooth last night.
Her two front teeth really were all she wanted for Christmas this year.
“Hi, Auntie Quinn. Do you like my cookies?” She shoved a candy cane shaped one at me.
I examined the mess of red and green icing. “I think it looks amazing,” I half-lied. “Can I try one?”
“Not yet. Gran says they’re for later.”
I bet that was what Mom said. “Have you seen Gran today?”
“She’s upstairs with Grandpa. He’s sneezing a lot.”
Great.
Dad being sick was the last thing anyone needed.
This was probably a very good time to introduce myself. My name is Quinn Langley, and my family has run the Santa’s Grotto at the Christmas fair in town for the past fifty years, ever since the inception of the fair itself. The current Santa, my dad, was currently in bed with what my nurse mother insisted was the flu.
Santa could not have the flu, and this was a complete and utter disaster.
Why, I hear you ask? Because it’s ten days until Christmas, and if there’s no Santa in the grotto, there’s no Santa. Breaking fifty years of tradition was not in my family’s wheelhouse, and there was nobody else in our house who could be Santa.
My brother-in-law was too busy running the Christmas tree lot on our farm, and my sister was too pregnant to even pretend to be a man. My grandfather was evidently relying on spiked eggnog to get him through the holiday season, and I’d seen enough bad Christmas movies to know that a drunk Santa was not the best idea in the world.
As for me…
Well, no, thank you. Pretending to be a male Santa was not my idea of some holiday fun, and all those kids wiping their grubby mitts on me? Ugh, I’ll pass.
Not that I didn’t like kids. I did. I liked kids just fine. As long as they were Jasmine. I wasn’t so hot on other people’s kids.
I also had the world’s shortest patience and a tendency to speak before I could think it through, a friendly gift inherited from my gramps. I didn’t think Santa was that kind of person.
Either way, if my dad’s flu test came back positive, I was in the shit.
Because finding a new Santa would be my job, and I couldn’t think of a single person in this godforsaken town that could fit the bill.
Snow Cove, Vermont, population two-thousand, three hundred and one—soon to be two, thanks to my sister—had been named the ‘Best Small Town for Christmas Vibes’ for the past ten years. The town was a weird shape in that the boundary of it stretched out down to the mountains and one large resort for people who liked snow sports, but the edge of the old, original graveyard was close enough to the Canadian border that one could say it flirted with it. The road that ran up to and along the border was enough to stop people accidentally slipping into Canada.
Unless they were on the run from the law. Then the road didn’t stop them.
Don’t ask me how I know that. It’s a long story, and one I don’t have time to tell you right now. I will tell you that it involves a Chevy, a murderer, a puppy, and a pumpkin.
Don’t worry. No puppies were harmed.
Or pumpkins.
“Yes… Yes, thank you, Dr. Jarvis… Okay, yes, I will. Thank you.” Mom clicked off the phone call as she stepped into the kitchen. “Oh, Jasmine, look at those. They’re lovely.”
Jasmine gave her the same gap-toothed grin she’d given me, then responded by enthusiastically tipping a small pot of edible red glitter over a cookie shaped like Santa’s hat. The glitter went everywhere, making Mom wince as it scattered over the floor tiles.
That was her own fault. I told her not to give her the glitter. Edible or otherwise, glitter was made by the devil.
“Well? How did his test come back?” I asked, pouring myself a cup of coffee.
She grimaced. “Flu. Sorry, Quinn. You’re going to have to help us find a new Santa, or the grotto will have to close.”
I ignored the cup. “Are you kidding? The grotto is supposed to open in twenty-four hours. How the hell am I supposed to find a Santa in one day?”
